


Incriminating Information

by Philosopher_King



Series: The Spy Who Came In from the Cold [5]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Conversations, Implied Sexual Content, Jadzia Dax is a good bro, M/M, Post-Episode: s04e26 Broken Link, Switch Julian Bashir, Too much information, but it's all offscreen, conversations about sex, lighthearted conversations that turn serious, mentions of Julian/Leeta, slightly gross details, takes place early in season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29447778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosopher_King/pseuds/Philosopher_King
Summary: Julian is sharing a little too much information with Jadzia about the difficulties involved in keeping up a secret relationship with Garak while he's confined to a holding cell for 6 months... and then she asks a serious question about where the relationship is going and gets an intimate confession of a different kind.
Relationships: Julian Bashir & Jadzia Dax, Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Series: The Spy Who Came In from the Cold [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2163039
Comments: 19
Kudos: 54





	Incriminating Information

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been giving me trouble for a couple weeks now. I decided it was time to push it out of the nest.
> 
> I've given in and made a series for my loosely connected Garashir fics. About half of them should have their own sub-series titled "Wingman Jadzia Dax" or "Jadzia Dax Is a Good Bro." This one relies on some information that was established in the previous fic, "Had we but world enough, and time," but I don't think you need to have read that to understand what's going on here.

Jadzia loved dirty gossip (a trait she had inherited primarily from Curzon, but also, in varying degrees, from all her other previous hosts, with the notable exception of Tobin). She loved offering advice, solicited or un-, on other people’s love lives. She was a proud, unrepentant busybody. But now, in spite of all that, she found herself regretting having busybodied herself into the position of Julian’s sole confidante about his relationship with Garak.

No one else officially knew about it, even if practically everyone suspected—from Captain Sisko down to the infirmary nurses, Odo’s security deputies, Garak’s semi-regular customers, and anyone who just happened to be in the Replimat on their lunch days. Jadzia sometimes wished Julian could talk about it with Miles, though of course she knew there were a number of reasons why that wasn’t an option (including Miles’s suspicion of Cardassians and general prudery in addition to the ostensible secrecy). Maybe Keiko would be more sympathetic…? But she and Julian weren’t close, despite his bosom friendship with her husband, and Jadzia could hardly imagine him being comfortable sharing the same kinds of details to which she was treated.

At the moment, Julian was complaining about the tribulations he’d been enduring since Garak had been sentenced, two months ago now, to six months of confinement to a station holding cell… officially for breaking into a restricted section of a Federation starship, but in reality for attempting to destroy the Founders’ entire race. Jadzia wasn’t sure she was comfortable with his having gotten off so lightly… but she understood Captain Sisko’s reasons for wanting to keep the Cardassian spy close, rather than letting him languish in a Federation prison hundreds of lightyears away; and more than that, she respected Odo’s willingness to let him bear the punishment only for what he had succeeded in doing, not what he had intended to do.

Jadzia found it somewhat puzzling that, with full knowledge of what he’d intended, Julian was not only still intimate, but apparently still infatuated with Garak—the same Julian who had tried in earnest to break the Jem’Hadar’s addiction to ketracel-white and refused to talk to Miles for a week after he’d destroyed his work; who had stayed alone for months on a planet of suffering people who feared and mistrusted him, trying to find a cure for their incurable blight; who barely a week ago had worked himself ragged for days in an understaffed field hospital on a colony still under Klingon bombardment. But she supposed his decision to stay involved with Garak was between him and his conscience… unlike the intimate details of that involvement, which were now between Julian, Garak, and Jadzia.

“The problem with only being able to touch each other in a holosuite during my lunch hour,” Julian was saying, gesturing with his sloshing beer glass, “is that it severely cuts down on our variety of options. There’s the obvious problem that we only have an hour, of course… but also that I have to go right back to work afterward, so I have to be, you know, presentable. And Odo has to search my picnic bag and scan me for contraband in my pockets before we go, so I really can’t bring anything other than food and a somewhat excessive quantity of wet napkins. Do you realize how much that takes off the table?”

“No handcuffs, I’m guessing,” Jadzia said. “Unless you borrowed them from Odo…”

“First of all, I can’t bring a dermal regenerator, because there’s no good reason why either of us would need one in a holosuite unless the safeties were off, which they shouldn’t be. So that means the only skin damage that can be inflicted is on parts of my body that are covered by the uniform and that I can repair when I have a moment to myself. Or, well, Garak has said he doesn’t mind letting some things heal naturally if they’re covered by his clothes… but I can’t draw blood, obviously, because that would stain, and anyway if I break the skin there’s always a risk of infection.”

“I can see how that might cramp your style,” Jadzia said dryly over the rim of her glass. She figured she didn’t have much right to complain of oversharing about _this_ aspect of their love life; after all, Doctor Bashir had recently had to deal with the aftermath of her getting together with Worf. They’d tried to be more careful after that first time, to spare Julian the embarrassment of having to find out exactly what they got up to and when… but after this conversation, Jadzia was thinking maybe they shouldn’t bother.

“But the _worst_ thing is even more basic than that,” Julian said. He looked around to make sure no one was listening and then leaned in to say, “No condoms or lubricant.” He spoke the words so quietly he was barely doing more than mouthing them… which would probably draw more attention than if he had just continued speaking normally. “That makes it nearly impossible for us to, uh, change roles,” he continued, still quiet but no longer whispering. “Garak hasn’t complained, but I’ll admit I’m getting a little bored.”

Did Jadzia need to know that Julian was dissatisfied because while his Cardassian boyfriend was in jail, he couldn’t give it to him up the ass? No, she did not. She just raised her eyebrows and tightened her lips before taking a long drink of her Black Hole (which she found herself idly wishing were actually its namesake). A perceptive conversation partner would take that as a discouraging signal, but of course Julian didn’t.

“It’s not completely out of the question that I could, ah, take some measures to prepare in advance… but there is, as I mentioned, the problem that I have to be back at work right away and it would be difficult to prevent… a certain degree of mess or discomfort. Which would interfere with my ability to work and might become… noticeable.”

“You _do_ have access to painkillers,” Jadzia pointed out, trying not to think too hard about exactly what kind of ‘mess or discomfort’ he was concerned to avoid.

Julian scrunched up his face. “It’s not always exactly _pain_ that’s the problem.”

Oh, saints and stars. Jadzia knew exactly what he was talking about—mostly because _Curzon_ knew exactly what he was talking about—and she really wished she didn’t.

“The obvious solution would be to visit on one of my days off, but of course everyone expects me to spend my days off with Leeta—including Leeta. Yes, I know,” he said, forestalling her inevitable reprimand. “This isn’t fair to her and I shouldn’t drag on the charade.”

“It really is, and you really shouldn’t,” Jadzia said tightly, indignation flaring in her chest as it did whenever this subject came up.

“I promise, I’ll break up with her soon. I was very much hoping _she’d_ break up with _me;_ that would be less painful for both of us…”

“Oh, how nice of you to show consideration for her feelings,” Jadzia said, laying on the tone of sarcasm so thick that even Julian the Oblivious couldn’t miss it.

“Look, she knows as well as I do that this was only ever going to be a bit of temporary fun. And it _has_ been fun!”

“Except for all the sneaking around and lying…”

“I don’t like that part, either…”

“Then maybe you should consider not doing it.”

“I needed a cover. It would have been suspicious, you know it would. A few months is a normal dry spell, but it’s been _sixteen_ months now since Garak and I…” He didn’t finish the sentence, either out of uncharacteristic delicacy about saying what they had been doing, or perhaps out of an inability to specify what they were. “If I hadn’t accepted Leeta’s advances, people would have started trying to set me up. Miles, Jabara, Girani… That would’ve been even more of a mess. This way, I’ve bought myself a few more months of inconspicuousness.”

Jadzia had heard versions of this rationalization before, and it still failed to impress her. “All that is about what _you_ need to make _your_ life easier. Have you considered that maybe Leeta needs a boyfriend who isn’t lying to her about his feelings or his commitment?”

Julian at least had the grace to look chagrined. “I know. And I _am_ sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to _me_ ,” Jadzia said testily. “ _I’m_ not the one you’re lying to about the nature of our relationship.”

Julian swiped a hand down his face. “I know that, too. But I _am_ putting you in a rather awkward position.”

 _You can say **that** again_, Jadzia thought fervently—a thought she conveyed only by raising her eyebrows and directing her gaze and the tilt of her head to the side.

“I know you also care about Leeta,” Julian continued.

_…oh, yes, there’s that too._

Jadzia took a deep breath and asked a question she’d wanted to ask for a while—certainly ever since Julian had taken up with Leeta—and which had been significantly sharpened by Garak’s attempt to destroy the Founders and subsequent imprisonment. “Julian… where do you see this thing with Garak going?”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

Of course he had told her early on that he knew it couldn’t go much of anywhere. They would probably always have to keep it secret… though he’d expressed some fleeting hope when Tain and the Obsidian Order were destroyed that maybe Garak had no more enemies that they needed to worry about (Dukat, of course, could always be managed), and again—perversely—when the Klingons had attacked the Cardassian Union and suddenly the Federation found itself as Cardassia’s uneasy ally. Maybe, he’d said, maybe they won’t be considered a hostile power anymore; maybe then it wouldn’t be suspicious for a Starfleet officer to be in a relationship with a Cardassian agent. But after Garak’s attempt at genocide—even if Starfleet never found out what he’d really done—how could Captain Sisko ever trust him as a partner to one of his senior officers? How could _Julian_ ever trust him as a real, serious partner?

“I mean… is it worth all the sneaking around and lying if it can’t last longer than your assignment here—if that long? Is it worth hurting Leeta, and however many other women you decide you need as ‘cover’? Why not commit yourself genuinely to the relationship with Leeta, and instead tell Garak that it’s over?”

Julian put his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. He didn’t speak for a few seconds, just rubbed his eyes tiredly.

When he finally brought his hands back down, his eyes were bright and slightly reddened, and when he started speaking again, his voice sounded strained, on the edge of cracking. “I thought, when I committed to a career in Starfleet, that I was giving up on the possibility of a permanent relationship. I broke off my engagement with the woman who I’d thought was the love of my life. Ever since then, I’ve gone into _every_ relationship with the thought that it can only be temporary. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter!” he was quick to clarify. “Every experience is precious and irreplaceable. I really do love the partners I’ve been with for a few years, or just a few months, even knowing it can’t last; perhaps it makes me treasure my time with them even more. I can take my leave of each person with gratitude for the time we spent together, without bitterness or regret for what might have been.”

“Of course; I understand.” Jadzia, like Curzon before her and Torias and Emony before him, savored each brief encounter or temporary connection the same way. They knew that _no_ relationship could be forever, since the Dax symbiont would outlive them and all their humanoid partners. (Oh, but Dax had been so tempted to go back to their partnership with Kahn—a partnership that would truly allow them to spend the rest of their lives together, whether they endured through many more humanoid lifetimes or ended with the deaths of Jadzia and Lenara. It had been so tempting to rest in familiarity, in stability, in the comfort of knowing and being known.)

“I thought I felt that way about Garak, too,” Julian said, and his voice was even more quiet and strained. “I thought it could be just another thrilling, rich, beautiful experience to add to the rest. But when I think about our time coming to an end… I can’t feel the same acceptance or gratitude. I feel… dread. Panic, even. I don’t want to let go. It’s probably just infatuation,” he added hurriedly. “Limerence, or whatever the psychologists call it.”

“You’ve been sleeping together for almost a year and a half,” Jadzia pointed out. “And you started having feelings for him more than two years ago.” She was starting to see why he was worried.

“Closer to three years ago,” Julian said glumly. “It shouldn’t still feel like this,” he burst out in frustration, his lip curling with a hint of self-directed disgust. “He’s a torturer—or he was—and a murderer. I’ve dedicated my life to healing, to _saving_ lives. He’s the opposite of all the ideals I hold highest. But I can’t pull myself away. I really thought about it, after the incident with the Founders; I told myself I should end it then, I _had_ to end it. But I couldn’t make myself do it. I excused it to myself, and to him, by saying that I knew this could only be temporary—that I was never looking for a life partner. But when I really think about leaving him—or about him leaving me, if he ever gets the chance to go home…”

With a tiny shudder, he gripped his own upper arms and drew his shoulders inward, as if cold, or giving himself comfort. “It’s like an addiction. How could I ever go without our conversations—the constant, exhilarating battle of wits; the testing and stretching of my intellectual powers? How _did_ I ever go without it? And God, the _sex_ —it’s like nothing else. I don’t just mean because he’s an alien—I’ve had sex with aliens who had _much_ stranger reproductive equipment.”

Jadzia prayed to whatever higher power might be listening that Julian would _not_ provide more details. She’d seen her fair share of strange alien reproductive equipment (and that included Humans, from her perspective), but she didn’t need any more graphic information about Julian’s sex life, especially with Garak—certainly not with his clinician’s eye for anatomical minutiae.

The Prophets must have been smiling on her, because all Julian said in elaboration was, “After a year and a half, it’s lost none of its thrill—it’s only gotten better as we’ve gotten to know each other better. It’s like… it’s like we fuck as much with our minds as with our bodies. He never shuts up, and it’s _glorious_. Do you know, Garak told me a story he _insisted_ was true, and who knows with him, but it’s a good story—that he once got a man he was interrogating to confess just by staring at him in silence for four hours? Well, sometimes I think he could just _talk_ me to orgasm without touching me—and it probably wouldn’t take four hours, either.”

As intimate details went, that one was fairly _non_ -graphic, Jadzia had to concede… but it still felt more truly _intimate_ than any of Julian’s not-so-subtle innuendos about which physical activities were off the menu and why.

“I’ve been with so many stunningly gorgeous people in my life”—Jadzia knew he didn’t mean it as a boast, but she rolled her eyes anyway; Julian, of course, didn’t notice—“I mean, look at Leeta; she’s breathtaking, isn’t she?” Jadzia was inclined to agree (she had very fond memories of a few nights two years before). “But somehow this middle-aged, stocky, slightly flabby Cardassian man is the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen. He keeps fussing about needing to lose weight and I can’t tell him this but I don’t want him to change a centimeter. I worship not just the scales on his feet, but the flab around his waist.” He got a soft, dopy look on his face and his fingers made a light squeezing gesture around his beer glass that Jadzia assumed was some kind of imaginative transference. It was almost sweet, though again, another image she didn’t need.

“Julian, you have got it _bad_ ,” she said with conviction.

“I know!” he moaned. “It shouldn’t still _be_ like this,” he repeated, as if he could change his feelings by persuading them they were mistaken. “Should it?” he asked her, almost plaintive.

“I don’t know,” she said gently. “But whenever I—meaning Dax—have felt that way about someone for that long, I’ve married them.”

Julian let out a burst of high-pitched, slightly hysterical laughter; a few of Quark’s other patrons turned to give him unimpressed looks. “Marry _Garak?”_ he said, more quietly.

Jadzia shrugged, taking a sip of her drink. “It’s an option,” was all she said.

“Of course it isn’t!” he protested, leaning in so he could keep his voice low. “Can you imagine how Starfleet would react? I’d be forced to resign, or discharged at worst—at best, Starfleet Intelligence would have agents tailing me— _us_ —for the rest of our lives. To say _nothing_ of the basic disconnect in our value systems. How could I make a life with him, knowing who he’s been, what he’s done? What he did just _two months_ ago?” He looked helpless, genuinely distraught. He might have thought he meant the questions rhetorically, but Jadzia thought some part of him was truly looking for the answer.

“I don’t know,” Jadzia said again, simply and honestly. “But if you can’t find a way, you might have to stop seeing him altogether.”

Julian’s face took on exactly the combination of dread and panic that he had said was his response to the thought of ending things with Garak.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and she really did feel for him even if she couldn’t approve of the object of his attachment. “But you’ll never break the addiction if you keep feeding it.”

“I know,” Julian said miserably.

“Often, the best way to fall out of love with someone is to fall in love with someone else,” she pointed out.

“Got any suggestions?” he asked glumly.

“You _could_ try spending more time with your actual girlfriend…”

“But I’m not in love with Leeta,” he said, lowering his voice almost to a murmur.

“I know. But maybe you could be.”

“Maybe.” He looked doubtful.

“Or… you could have a serious conversation with Garak about how you feel and whether your values could be brought into alignment.”

The look of dread and panic on Julian’s face intensified, and Jadzia couldn’t help laughing—not unkindly, she hoped.

“Those are your options, as far as I can see it,” she said, as sympathetically as she could manage.

Julian buried his face in his hands again. Jadzia expected him to look up or start talking again after a second or two, but he stayed that way for long enough that she was afraid he was crying.

“Julian?” she said carefully, laying a tentative hand on his upper arm.

When he raised his head, his eyes were reddened again, but his face was dry. The dread and panic were gone, and now he just looked lost. “I need… I need to think about this.”

Jadzia gave his arm an encouraging squeeze before pulling her hand away. Julian looked down at his beer as if it might have some useful advice to give him, then took a long pull from it, draining the glass. He put his palms on the table, preparing to lever himself to his feet.

Jadzia wondered if it would be cruel to bring their conversation back to the original topic (which she had been so desperate to escape!), but her impulse not to let it end on this gloomy note won out. “Oh, and Julian?”

“Hmm?” he responded, a little listlessly, still tensed to leave.

“About your other problem.”

“Which one?” he asked with dull irony, sinking back into his chair; there were so many.

“The concern about… ‘mess.’ Have you considered the pads that some Humans use during menstruation?” Jadzia was profoundly grateful to the course of Trill evolution that she didn’t have to deal with that problem—but she had compared notes with some of her Human classmates at the Academy… and her Human lovers who menstruated had been more open with her about it than they probably would be with males of their own species.

“Those would still show up on Odo’s scans. I’m not sure what he’d think I was trying to sneak in that way, but…”

“There are also undergarments made of special absorbent fabric designed for menstruating Humans. Some of them are loose-fitting enough to accommodate… additional equipment. Or you could probably give modified instructions to a replicator.”

“Huh. I hadn’t considered that.”

“I didn’t think you would have.” Against her better judgment, but at the prompting of seven lifetimes’ worth of prurient curiosity, she asked, “How has Garak been managing the _mess_ problem?”

“I’m not sure, honestly. He hasn’t said anything about it, so I assume he’s handling it somehow…”

“Would he tell you if he weren’t?”

“He is _very_ fastidious about his clothes. I assume he would simply refuse to do anything that posed a risk to them.” He frowned. “I wonder if Cardassian undergarments are made from super-absorbent fabric…”

“It’s never come up in conversation?”

“Well, no. It’s not really the kind of thing we talk about.”

“All theory and no practicalities with you two.”

“That’s how we like it. We don’t talk about work… well, not his current work, anyway.” His face darkened as some troubling thought occurred to him—maybe about Garak’s previous work, or maybe about whether they would start talking about their work if they were married. Jadzia could scarcely imagine either asking the other, sincerely, _“How was your day, honey?”_ Their version of domesticity would probably still revolve around intense literary and philosophical discussions that apparently doubled as foreplay. (Did that mean they were playing verbal footsie in the Replimat once a week?)

“Thanks for—thanks for listening,” Julian said, heaving himself to his feet. His voice was sounding a little wobbly. “And for the… perspective.”

“Anytime,” said Jadzia, and she really meant it, despite all her internal griping about the excess of gory detail. “And… if you ever need a shoulder to cry on, I’m here for that too.”

Jadzia thought she might be called upon to provide that sooner rather than later, but then Julian took in a sharp breath through his nose and made the exaggerated show of drawing himself up and pulling himself together that he described, perplexingly, as ‘stiff upper lip.’

“I hope it won’t come to that,” he said with affected heartiness, and then, “Good night, Jadzia.”

“Good night, Julian,” she said with fond warmth.

She hoped he would find a way to make it work with Leeta, but she wasn’t optimistic. Mostly she hoped he wouldn’t get his heart broken, because she didn’t look forward to picking up the pieces… but really, she didn’t know what she’d expected when she encouraged him to pursue something with Garak. (Well, she hadn’t expected him to attempt genocide, for one thing.)

But if a chronically mendacious, partially reformed murderous ex-spy with a philosophical bent and an eye for fashion could make Julian happy—if, in spite of everything, they could make _each other_ happy? In three centuries of life, Dax had seen stranger things.

**Author's Note:**

> Should this be Teen & Up or Mature? I wavered on that one.


End file.
